Comment 19 for bug 123282

Remember that sometimes DNS is not properly setup. In my organization the computer dept has a mixed setup of resolving IP addresses via DNS and via SMB/NETBIOS/WINS or something samba-related.

I had this exact problem until I tried to ping the address book server from my linux machine, telling me it couldn't be found. From a windows machine it was found. One of the internal webservers are "set up" the same way - only "windows-IP-resolution" works, not DNS.

Solutions:
a) Setting up samba and make it resolve addresses for you might help the situation. If this works it's probably "best" because it mimics whatever windows does, and in my case the computer department mostly think windowsy.

b) or, you could add the address book server IP address to /etc/hosts, like I did and it works like a charm. If you go to Evolution Prefecences, the exchange account and under Receiving options find global catalog server name to be nooslse002.sonnico.local, you need to find out the IP address of that server. I just ran " ping nooslse002.sonnico.local " on a windows machine. Now add that address to your /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
32.8.8.70 nooslse002 nooslse002.sonnico.local

Bob should now be your uncle. He was in my case; I didn't get the "LDAP authentication failed" and when I composed a new message, the lookup effectively worked. This will break when computer department changes the IP of the global addressbook server. They probably won't, but we're aware of Murphy's law.

To developers: Maybe something could be done already in the settings window, like to see if the server can be contacted at all?